The invention relates to a solid, textile and/or skin care composition as well as to its use and manufacture. The invention also relates to a laundry detergent or cleaning agent that comprises the solid, textile and/or skin care composition.
Repeated washing of textiles often causes them to become stiff and to lose their softness. In order to restore their softness/flexibility, to lend them a pleasant fragrance and/or to improve their antistatic properties, the textiles, after the actual washing and cleaning process, are treated with a fabric softener in a subsequent rinse process.
The majority of the commercial fabric softeners are aqueous formulations that comprise a cationic fabric-softening compound having one or two long chain alkyl groups in a molecule as the major active ingredient. Widely used cationic textile-softening compounds include for example methyl-N-(2-hydroxyethyl)-N,N-di(tallowacyloxyethyl)ammonium compounds, methyl-N-(2-hydroxyethyl)-N,N-di(tallowacyloxyethyl)ammonium compounds or N,N-dimethyl-N,N-di(tallowacyloxyethyl)ammonium compounds.
Due to the cationic, textile softening compounds, these conventional fabric softener formulations cannot be used at the same time with the laundry detergent or cleaning agent in the actual washing or cleaning process, because the cationic textile softening compounds interact undesirably with the anionic surfactants of the laundry detergent or cleaning agent. Therefore an additional rinse process is required, which however is time and energy intensive.
A further disadvantage of the conventional fabric softeners is that they do not prevent lime scale residues being deposited on the washing during the rinse step. In addition, the conventional fabric softeners often leave behind unsightly deposits in the dispensing draw of the washing machine.
Problems can also occur with other textile and/or skin care compounds, which for example need to be dosed separately and/or need a separate rinse cycle.